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The real question is, what do you want the dead raised for? It's already pretty well-established that you can't bring a person back to life and have them be the exact same person they were before, but... maybe that's not all a Dark wizard is interested in. Do they want animated bodies for some gruntwork? There's already Inferi. Maybe information from the deceased? Perhaps some spell that's a dark variation on the magic portrait-making spell that brings the body back to life as a grim facsimile of its former self for a few moments. What about just horrible Dark magic in general? Maybe the darkest of dark magic has the power to bring the body back to life but not return the soul - possibly the Dark wizard has to shear off a part of their own soul to keep the corpse animated. The actual act usually isn't as important as the intent behind it, after all.

Maybe the darkest of dark magic has the power to bring the body back to life but not return the soul - possibly the Dark wizard has to shear off a part of their own soul to keep the corpse animated. The actual act usually isn't as important as the intent behind it, after all.

Wouldn't that essentially be a Horcrux, though?

If, by some incredible coincidence, this dear friend of his/hers had a Horcrux, then it would be as simple as doing the spell/ceremony that Peter Pettigrew performed in the graveyard in Little Hangleton in GoF, but if not, there is no canon way to bring her back for good. Perhaps if there was some sort of device or spell that could bring the friend's soul back in the same manner of the Resurrection Stone, he could use some deeply Dark Magic to trap the soul inside some magical object, such as a mirror or a painting (one with which he could communicate). Just a thought...

Maybe it's because I'm rather morbid, but if someone forced me to sum up all seven books and give them one sentence that explained the moral in them all, I would say: It's a story about the inevitability of death, the consequences of defying it, and the glory found in the graceful acceptance of it.

The message wasn't pushed so much through the first six, but DH heavy in the No, really, you HAVE to die department.

Originally Posted by Inverarity

Raising the dead, though, Jesus-and-Lazarus style, is strongly implied to be impossible in canon.

What he said. The story of the three brothers, and the forest/mid-life King's Cross scene, and Harry being the "Master of Death" not by defying death, but accepting it for the greater good -- the big moral is that you simply cannot either avoid it, nor come back from death.

That all said, I don't see a way for your character to communicate with a honest-to-Merlin ('God's not so appropo. . .) dead person. If she were a ghost, obviously, it would be possible, but beyond that, J.K. never showed a way for a dead person to be anything but dead.

I do have a suggestion, but it would throw a hammer in your plot if the character is supposed to come back as the person they were. Different religions suggest that a person can animate a corpse, filling it with magic -- not a soul -- so that it can walk, talk, maybe even breathe. The corpse, though, is merely a corpse. Depending on what you believe, what comes out of its mouth could be a manifestation of the person who cast the magic (their magic, their "thoughts", therefore, their words coming out of the body), or an outside entity possessing the corpse.

What they said. The series is about loving people and accepting death, more or less. I mean...maybe there is a way to stuff enough magic and machinery into a body to make it walk, talk, and be perfectly preserved. But at best, it would be like a portrait of the person, capturing only a small part of their personality and knowledge. And the person is still dead as a doornail. If it makes your character happy....